Autumn Winds & Giveaway

I am so pleased to be a part of the "Autumn in the Air" blog hop with Benartex! You can see lots more Autumn inspiration all week long at their blog Sew in Love With Fabric. Giveaways each day!

Even though autumn is the second furthest thing from my mind right now, winter being the furthest, I do so love the colours of the Fall season, so when I was asked if I would like to be a part of this hop, despite the real life goings-on right now (animals, renovations, summer planning, to name a few) I jumped at the chance. Besides, just say two words: "'free' fabric", okay yes, but I actually meant "Amanda Murphy", and you've got my full attention and adoration! This is her new line for Contempo, by Benartex, named 'Thankful'. It is wonderful, fresh modern colours for Fall. And yes, there is a giveaway of some of it! Be sure to hop over to the Benartex blog to read an interview with Amanda about this line!

The Best of Times

Another title of a post where I sat, screen blank, mind flitting, heart full. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll have seen why it's been over a week since I posted.

Brady was here with Brianne, of course, for their annual September visit. Every one of the eight days was chock full of activities. He and Grandpa Rocco (named for one of our dogs; his other Grandpa is Grandpa Hague) did manage to squeeze in a few bike rides, this one along the riverfront in Windsor. For those of you geography buffs, yup, that is the GM Renaissance Centre in downtown Detroit, and it is north of Brady, who is yup, in Canada. The teacher in me just had to show you a part of Canada that is south of a whole lot of the USA. We are down on the 42nd parallel of latitude; the border between our countries is mainly on the 49th. Moving on....

One of the highlights of this trip was a day trip to the Toledo Zoo. We three adults are not enamoured of zoos, for a variety of reasons, although I do see their importance in saving orphans, and saving species.  Well, all four of us loved and raved about this zoo.  Brady was the very best guide we could have, no lie.  Because of his love of the show "Wild Kratts" on PBS, he was a wealth of knowledge, often telling us, ahead of seeing the sign, what animals we were looking at, or interesting facts about them. The red panda and the sloth bear were just two of the many he told us about in the collage above.

One of the reasons Brianne likes to come in September is to catch a Lions game. The season opener is always extra-special.

Brady was PUMPED that 'his' cheerleaders were there and that he got to pose with some of them for a photo. The last time he posed with the cheerleaders was at his first game when he was 5, and they weren't official cheerleaders back then. He got right into the game at many points, this one when the Lions scored yet another touchdown. Go Matthew! (as in Stafford--QB, we love him) Yup, they won.

Pre-game, we took in the Meijer kids area where there were loads and loads of activities. Along with getting his face painted, he did the high jump, and got his photo in USA Today!

Can you spot his nana....

Grandpa and Brady got one-on-one time, and so did Nana and Brady:

He sewed like a champ again, this time on the 1947 Featherweight (ya ya, I haven't written her story yet, sorry). He wanted to make a mask this time, not a quilt. He drew a pattern, and we used some leftover fabric (I still have a ton of that navy Essentials by Moda ha) from his Fractured Pieces quilt, and some Spiderman fabric I got at Fat Quarter Shop last year to make him....something! Still have enough for a pillowcase I believe. You get a bonus look at the granite and cupboards there, no backsplash yet, and another peek at Aidan's 'Radiance' quilt, which I still have to package up and mail off, but I'm taking this weekend to spread it on my bed and enjoy it as much as I can.

My non-quilts WIP is my selvages rug, which is coming along...

I started it while cruising around over the course of their visit, sitting in the backseat with Brady. He knitted several stitches of it too; the child is a natural whether it's brains, sports or arts. I videoed him, but it's too long to insert here; you'll have to take my word for it. He loves knitting, by the way. This is a project I saw by Amanda of Crazy Mom Quilts. That link will take you to her tutorial. It is fun and man, does it eat up those selvages! You knot them on the go, but some of the shorter ones I am stitching together, forwards and then going back over the stitching to reinforce it, and it is working well.  It is getting heavy!

I've been quilting a little bit, sneaking time after Brady went to bed to work with these pretties:

That is a sneak peek of a project for my stop on a blog hop later this week. Watch Benartex's blog, Sew in Love With Fabric, for the hop schedule.

Meanwhile, today and probably a bit of tomorrow, since today is half over, egad, I am going to participate in the National Sew A Jelly Roll day, which you can read about here. This link: Fat Quarter Shop will take you to their page (no affiliation, just pure love for their shop) where they have a special on jelly rolls, as well as a link to a video tutorial for a cool quilt. Connecting Threads also has some great jelly rolls at terrific prices (they do not charge a cutting fee; you pay the same price per yard as you would yardage). Here (affiliate link) is one I particularly like, Starlight Garden. There are two jelly roll black and white quilts I have on my to-do list; here is one from McCalls Quick Quilts:

Oh how I love that one of my librarians is a budding new quilter; she ordered a subscription to this magazine which just started this Spring.

And if you'd like more jelly roll quilt ideas, there are lots on Moda Bakeshop. This one, Hometown Christmas, by my friend Rose, at somethingrosemade is the one I plan to work on. Jasmine of Quilt Kisses has some great jelly roll tutorials: here and here. Remember you do not HAVE to have a jellyroll! Look how many strips the pattern requires, and cut 2.5" strips from your own stash! I may just be doing that in my corner of QBL.

Okay, I'm off to the races, ha!

Fleurologie

So I'm writing from my dismantled sewing room/guest bedroom in our Florida condo.  We are down here for about 10 days to pack up, put our stuff in storage and do some house-hunting.  Easy-peasy.  Lemon squeezy.

So far so good; all is going tickety-boo.  And guess what was sitting, waiting for me, smiling in the Florida sunshine at my door when we arrived?!

This!!

I won!  Woot! Woot!  At the beginning of September, Sept. 2-13, to be exact, Moda ran a blog tour,  "The Moda Love Blog Tour" where each day three designers wrote a post about things they love.  They also showed off their newest fabric lines by making the Moda Love quilt.  You can download the quilt if you click on "Stephanie's post" below.  Each designer had a giveaway.  This was during the week Brady and Brianne were visiting, but on a couple of the mornings before I heard his little feet padding along the floor, right after he oh-so-carefully-and-quietly closed the door to the bedroom he and his mommy were sharing, I was able to visit some of the blogs.  I visited Stephanie's blog on the very day they arrived, Sept. 3.

Each designer asked a question about what you love, or what your favourite pre-cut is, etc. Well, on Stephanie's post, that day, I wrote:

And I was chosen!  So Brady brought me good luck. Stephanie wrote me such a nice note inside the pretty card.  Very personal touch.

I just think this is so "wee-ooh, wee-ooh" because my round robin quilt I have been agonizing over all spring and summer got named "fleurs" (small f) and here I've won some fabric named "fleurologie" and it was on the day Brady arrived.  Now... what to make??

And yet another most splendiferous event happened:
I'm being quoted (I wanted to bust a gut laughing that someone would want to do that) in the introduction of my friend Lara's (BuzzinBumble) first and upcoming new book.  Wait for it....sit down....swallow if you are chewing something, or having a drink so you don't spit it out when you read what my comment was about...

AAACK-pliqué!!!

Too hilarious.  I guess she loved what I wrote on August 28:

3.  My friend, Lara, who blogs at BuzzinBumble, has just found out that a book she has been working on is going to be published by the American Quilters' Society!  Congrats, Lara!  It's a new method of "aaaack"-pliqué, so I will have to check it out and turn the way I say it in my head to "ahhh-pliqué", said with a sigh of contentment.  Normally, I don't mind appliqué, but this quilt was pretty intense.  So, I'm interested, as her method is raw-edge appliqué, whereas mine was all edge-turned, except for the "fleurs" word.

and she's incorporating this into her book introduction!  EEEK!

Speaking of loving what a blogger writes, check out this post from The Bitchy Stitcher.  I LOOOVE her made-up review of the book "A Quilt to Remember". Laugh-snorted out loud, and I needed to do that as I'm having a bit of a panic attack with all that's going on in my usually peace-filled condo.  Sniff.  Headed to the pool for some vitamin D, sweat (it's 91 and humid), cool waters and a read.